


Beginner's ASL

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: bonding over mutual loss, could be friendship could be romantic, depends on how you want to see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 16:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11211621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: Nikki reaches past words to communicate with the former hitman. They find a language in common.





	Beginner's ASL

The first word she learns to sign is “sorry.” Right hand in a fist with the thumb flat on top, making a clockwise circle around your chest as if showing physical proof of your regret. “Here is my heart,” you gesture, “it is aching.”

She scream-gasps in agony as she spills into the motel bath. No time for propriety, she’s gotten nude in worse situations. Off with the multicolor fur coat Ray surprised her with after a bad week, the ghost of his smell still clinging to the fibers, off with the camisole that’s the only thing she can bear touching her skin.

The big fella is indisposed on some private business, gone to root around outside, not even bothering to dab away the blood. So much damn blood. Her leg has gone numb from the crossbow injury. Her ribs, when she finally reveals them to the world, have turned a startling rainbow of colors. Greens and purples and blues. She’s not even sure if she’s cold or not, all she does is ache.

The sound of the door makes her jump like an electric shock. It’s the big fella. He’s got some motel towels slung over his shoulder, and an ice bucket in his left hand. He stops in the doorway to stare. She’s long been used to stares. But his stare is not like any she’s even had directed at her body. It doesn’t take in her white curves, the pink rosebuds of her nipples. His eyes are traveling the landscape of her injuries with a look of shock and... _familiarity_.

He sets the ice bucket down, jacket fringe dancing with the motion. He moves like a dancer, she’s noticed. His movements are always sudden and sure, with a grace she hasn’t ever seen in a man of his height. He makes that flat-topped fist and circles his heart, stare sorrowful and angry all at once.

_Sorry,_ he mouths, _sorry_.

His name, she learns, is Wes. This is shared via a whiteboard picked up on a whim while gathering supplies. His life before the bus picked out in bullet points, terse but somehow saying so much:

  * Friend killed
  * Arrested
  * Lost job
  * Drifting



When she asks about his friend, Wes licks his lips, hesitating. He puts the dry-erase marker to the board. Retreats a bit. Touches the wet felt tip to the plastic. Starts to draw a line. Changes his mind. Curves it into a different line.

G R A D Y he spells out laboriously. Then, with a slight smirk on his face, he sketches. A beard. Dark, curly hair. A scarf. Simple blocky shapes that describe a figure with the space they leave.

Nikki smiles, probably for the first time since the arrest. She looks up to find Wes watching her, waiting for her reaction. She reaches out for the marker, which he surrenders. With her finger, she wipes away the beard, the scarf, and an oval of hair at the top. She leaves the mustache, and extends what hair is left with scraggly lines.

R A Y she writes. The Y is crooked.

Nikki looks to Wes when she’s done. They exchange a look. She does not write bullet points. It’s too much to cram into pithy sentences. It can all come later, if there is a later.

The next sign she learns is “loss.” Gather the hands, fingers-up as if they’re a bouquet, at the midsection. Drop them down and out, spreading your fingers, as if dropping a vase on the floor in shock.

Ray was the first man to look at her like she was anything other than a collection of curves with an empty space inside. She can remember clear as day the moment Ray looked at her over her rap sheet, both stern authority figure and concerned friend: “you’re better than this.”

She’s always known that. She has a brain. She can plan. She was wasted on her back. Ray was the first person to recognize that in her, and she loved him a little bit right then and there.

Wes is the second man to look at her like that. When his hand falls open to grasp, it is because he’s waiting for her to put a gun or a tool or her hand in it. There is respect in his eyes. There is understanding. They share a pain even if the exact circumstances around it aren’t identical.

Wes allows her time to heal. They scribble plans all over the whiteboard, wipe it clean, start all over again. They list assets. Draw street maps. Write dirty jokes. Nikki realizes he has been missing something, someone to act as an anchor to keep him from just drifting through the world. Ray had been that for her. Funny how things change.

The bruises on her rib cage clear. Nikki laughs again. Wes signs fluidly and without pause, confident that he is next to someone that understands.

They draw a plan with the whiteboard, it’s erased by morning. Doesn’t matter, it stays in their hands and in their heads. They have a way forward.

Put a fist up to your nose, first knuckle slightly raised, then drop it suddenly like you’re pulling a grenade pin with your teeth. Swing it around to rest upside-down beneath your other fist, as if the grenade has rolled beneath some unsuspecting seat. That’s the sign for “revenge.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dude, can I just say this team-up gives me life? I don't care if they're revenge buddies or a couple, I just love everything about them. Numbers/Wrench is still my OTP, but I seriously love this dynamic and how well they work together.
> 
> My apologies if I didn't get the signs right, I'm not a signer at all :(


End file.
